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Chance, Indeterminacy, Multiplicity - Macba
Chance, Indeterminacy, Multiplicity - Macba
Branden W. Joseph
210
Kaprow, for instance, derived much from his introduction to Cage,
he largely rejected the strictness with which Cage implemented
3. Harold Rosenberg, “The American chance operations in favor of intuition and an understanding of the
Action Painters” (1952), The Tradition
of the New, New York: McGraw-Hill,
Abstract Expressionist legacy akin to its almost existentialist recep-
1959, pp. 23–39. Kaprow’s interest in tion by art critic Harold Rosenberg.3 Aspects of Kaprow’s resistance
Abstract Expressionism is, of course,
manifest in “The Legacy of Jackson
to the Cagean paradigm can be traced as far back as 1958, when he
Pollock” (1958), in Kelley, (ed.), pp. 1–9. explained that “the freest, most spontaneous and (to this writer)
most enjoyable” approach he had yet adopted in the development
4. Allan Kaprow, “One Chapter from
‘The Principles of Modern Art’,” It Is of his happenings was “just begin[ning] to imagine things, writing
No. 4, 1958, p. 52, ellipses in original. down his parts as he goes along until he decides to stop.” Reciting
On Cage’s critique of inspiration, see,
for example, John Cage, “45’ for a (and then rejecting) Cage’s already established critique of any such
Speaker” (1954), Silence, Middletown, intuitive and improvisational procedure, Kaprow continued, “when
Conn.: Wesleyan University Press,
1961, p. 170. one is left to intuition the risk is great that one becomes too depen-
dent on ‘inspiration’ (an extremely unreliable mistress) and so falls
5. Allan Kaprow, Assemblage, Environ-
ments, and Happenings, New York: into the trap of coming up constantly with clichés and habits. But
Harry N. Abrams, 1966, p. 175. Kaprow’s then, sometimes one is lucky….”4 By 1966, Kaprow would come
move away from Cage is discussed in
Jeff Kelley, Childsplay: The Art of Allan to reject Cage’s engagement with chance operations in favor of an
Kaprow, Berkeley, Ca.: University of approach he called “change,” predicated on “the following of
California Press, 2004, pp. 20–46.
intuition and wisdom” and “dependent upon human experience.”5
6. Al Hansen’s attraction to Cage’s
sense of anarchy is mentioned in
Dick Higgins, “Postface,” Jefferson’s
Like Kaprow, fellow New School classmates and future happeners
Birthday/Postface, New York: Something Al Hansen and Dick Higgins would adhere to something of an
Else, 1964, pp. 49, 51. The notion of
anarchy would also be mentioned by
existential vision of authorial risk, taking a Rosenberg-like concep-
Kaprow in notes to “A program tion of action painting into what could be called action music or
of Happenings? Events! & Situations?
Directed by Al Hansen, an eclectic,”
action theater. Hansen, for instance, embraced the anarchic side
(May 2, 1960), repr. in Hermann Braun, of Cage’s project, which he also took in a partially anti-Cagean
(ed.), George Brecht, Notebook V
direction of improvisation within chaotic and collaborative pieces
(March 1960-November 1960), Cologne:
Walther König, 1997, p. 88. On Hansen’s like his Hall Street Happening (1961; which inadvertently involved
Hall Street Happening, see Al Hansen, a performer’s falling through a skylight).6 Higgins credited Cage’s
A Primer on Happenings and Time/
Space Art, New York: Something Else course with providing “a sense of general activity and a taste for my
Press, 1965, pp. 11–20. own direction, to which previously my own skepticism had been
7. Higgins, “Postface,” pp. 50–51; very unkind,” an observation not unlike that made by Cage’s long-
Barbara Rose, An Interview with Robert time artistic colleague, Robert Rauschenberg, who called Cage “the
Rauschenberg, New York: Vintage
Books, 1987, p. 34. only one who gave me permission to continue my own thoughts.”7
Higgins, however, declared himself at odds with much of Cage’s
8. Dick Higgins, “Boredom and Danger”
(1966), A Dialectic of Centuries: Notes perspective. Moving in his own direction, Higgins transformed
towards a Theory of the New Arts, New Cage’s interest in chance – which, in French, as Higgins pointed
York: Printed Editions, 1978, pp. 48–49.
Kaprow not dissimilarly links chance
out, is “hasard” – into the notion of hazard or, more precisely,
to “risk and fear” in “Happenings in danger, which he explored in numerous compositions such
the New York Scene,” p. 19. Higgins’s
Danger Music #17 recalls Tristan
as Danger Music No. 17 (1962), the score for which reads simply,
Tzara’s “Roar,” in Robert Motherwell, “Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream! Scream!”8
(ed.), The Dada Painters and Poets:
An Anthology, New York: Wittenborn,
Schultz, Inc., 1951, p. 96; Tzara’s “poem” According to Higgins, neither he nor Hansen had much patience for
was included as part of Hansen’s Hall
Street Happening, see Hansen, A Primer,
the more detailed articles about chance operations and indetermi-
pp. 18–19. nacy Cage explicated within the course. “Once or twice,” he noted:
211
Cage read a theoretical article… the short theoretical statements from trans/
formation 2, and a (then) unpublished article by Christian Wolff on the relations
of time and sound. Some of us, particularly Hansen and myself, couldn’t for the life
of us imagine why Cage was interested in those things. They seemed so abstract,
compared with the very concrete observations that Cage favored in connection
with the pieces played in class, and so terribly old-fashioned in their implications.
9. Dick Higgins, “[On Cage’s Classes]” Mostly they read like legal contracts.9
(1970), in Richard Kostelanetz, (ed.),
John Cage: An Anthology, New York:
Praeger, 1970, p. 123 (ellipses in origi- Among Higgins’s classmates, evidently only George Brecht, who
nal). The statements Higgins seems
to be referencing appeared in trans/
had previously written a treatise entitled Chance-Imagery, shared
formation, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1952). Cage’s more theoretical leanings:
The usual format of our sessions would be that, before the class began,
Cage and George Brecht would get into a conversation, usually about “spiritual
virtuosity,” instead of the virtuosity of technique, physique, etc. This would
continue as the people arrived, then gradually expand, until the subject matter
became hard to follow.
212
Dick Higgins performing Danger Music No. 17, 1962
213
By the time Cage offered his first New School course, he had been
associated with chance operations for half a decade. Music of
Changes, Cage’s first manifesto presentation of chance, was complet-
ed in 1951 and debuted in at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York
on New Years Day, 1952. Prior to that moment, Cage’s references
to chance were somewhat occasional. In “Forerunners of Modern
Music” of 1949, Cage mentioned the way in which using “radios as
instruments” would deliver the continuity of sound production over
15. John Cage, “Forerunners of Modern to “accident.”15 Around the same time, Cage incorporated field
Music” (1949), Silence, p. 62.
recordings from Alexander Calder’s workshop into his soundtrack
for the film Works of Calder (1949–50), explaining to Pierre Boulez
that “No synchronizing was attempted and what the final result is
16. John Cage, Letter to Pierre Boulez, rather due to a chance that was admired.”16 Previously, in composi-
May 22, 1951, in Jean-Jacques Nattiez,
(ed.), The Boulez-Cage Correspondence,
tions such as Double Music (1941), in which Cage and Lou Harrison
Cambridge: Cambridge University wrote out their parts independently and then combined them,
Press, 1993, p. 93. The epigraph to this
article also refers to Cage’s soundtrack
without alteration, into the final piece, Cage courted a different
to Works of Calder and can be found type of chance, one arising from the simultaneous performance of
in John Cage, Letter to Pierre Boulez,
January 17 [1950], in Nattiez, (ed.), p. 48.
independent work (a procedure that Cage would continue to
pursue throughout many years of collaborations with dancer Merce
17. Boulez notes the resemblance of
Double Music to cadavre exquis in
Cunningham). Although the inspiration behind Double Music came
Nattiez, (ed.), p. 29; Cage’s visit to the from Cage’s interest in the anonymity of collective production,
Bauhaus is noted in Christopher Shultis,
associated with Gothic sculpture and embraced in the early Bauhaus
“Cage and Europe,” in David Nicholls,
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to (which Cage visited in 1930 or 1931), the method of combining
John Cage, Cambridge: Cambridge two entirely separate creative endeavors resembled the Surrealist
University Press, 2002, p. 22. George
Brecht invoked cadavre exquis in regard parlor game cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) in which a drawing or
to Cage’s “Music for Four Pianos,” poem is composed by different individuals unaware of each other’s
eighty-four independent compositions
(many composed via methods involving efforts.17 A few years later, Cage, Harrison, Henry Cowell, and
chance, although Brecht does not men- Virgil Thompson would explicitly take up the Surrealist method in
tion it), which could be played in any
combination by as many as four pianists the twenty Party Pieces they wrote together in the mid-1940s.18
at once; George Brecht, Chance-Imagery
(1957), New York: Something Else Press,
1965, p. 11.
Surprisingly absent from Cage’s earliest research is anything
akin to the technique used by Marcel Duchamp in Erratum Musical
18. These works, as Leta Miller notes,
were originally titled “Sonorous
(1913), in which vocal parts to be performed by Duchamp and
or Exquisite Corpses“: Leta E. Miller, his sisters Yvonne and Magdaleine were “composed” by picking
“Cage’s Collaborations,” in Nicholls,
(ed.), p. 154.
notes at random out of a hat. When sung by all three voices at
once, Duchamp’s libretto, a short dictionary definition of the verb
“to print,” sounded as a chaotic and cacophonous “harmony.”
19. Tristan Tzara, “Manifesto on
Duchamp’s method recalls the recipe for Dadaist poetry in Tristan
feeble love and bitter love” (1916–20), Tzara’s “Manifesto on feeble love and bitter love,” in which a
in Motherwell, p. 92.
newspaper page is cut up and its words drawn at random from a
20. Moira and William Roth, “John bag. “The poem,” Tzara noted wryly, “will be like you.”19 Cage
Cage on Marcel Duchamp,” Art
in America Vol. 61, No. 6, November–
became aware of the musical precedents in Duchamp’s oeuvre only
December 1973, p. 74; quoted in once he had begun his own investigation of chance operations
Richard Kostelanetz, (ed.), Conversing
with Cage, New York: Limelight
– to which Duchamp responded laconically, “I suppose I was fifty
Editions, 1994, p. 219. years ahead of my time.”20 Despite a superficial similarity, Cage
214
soon recognized that his compositions had far surpassed those
21. Kostelanetz, (ed.), Conversing with of Duchamp in the complexity of the processes used.21
Cage p. 219–20. At some point, Cage
came to own one of the more complex
and lesser-known of Duchamp’s chance The intricacy of Cage’s compositional procedures was evident in
compositions, La Mariée mise à nu par
Music of Changes. After having decided upon the work’s overall
ses célibataires même. Erratum Musi-
cal (1913); provenance given in Anne temporal structure, Cage divided the composition’s remaining ele-
D’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, ments into twenty-six charts: eight for sounds (half of each chart
(eds.), Marcel Duchamp, New York: The
Museum of Modern Art, 1973, p. 264. reserved for silence), eight for amplitudes or dynamics, eight for
durations, one for tempi, and one for superposition (“how many
22. John Cage, “Composition:
To Describe the Process of Composition events are happening at once during a given structural space”).22
Used in Music of Changes and Each chart was configured in eight columns and eight rows (those
Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” Silence,
p. 58. containing silences or no change in value [e.g., in tempo] gener-
ally not represented) so as to conform to the sixty-four-cell chart of
hexagrams in the I Ching, the Chinese “Book of Changes,” a copy
of which Christian Wolff had given him in late 1950 or early 1951.
Following the I Ching’s method of divining hexagrams by tossing
three coins six times, Cage could locate the corresponding places
on each grid and thereby define the necessary elements for each
and every acoustical event within the final composition. As docu-
mented by the invaluable work of James Pritchett and David
Bernstein, the compositional procedure of Music of Changes was
both time-consuming and labor-intensive, every sound being the
23. James Pritchett, The Music of John product of consulting multiple charts.23
Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993, pp. 78–88; and David W.
Bernstein, “Cage and High Modernism,” Neither Cage’s use of charts nor his employment of the I Ching
in Nicholls, (ed.), pp. 203–09.
began with Music of Changes. Both had been pioneered in the Con-
24. See Pritchett, pp. 60–78; and certo for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1950–51).24 In it,
Bernstein, pp. 193–203. Additional detail Cage staged an opposition between the piano, which began the
is provided in James Pritchett, “From
Choice to Chance: John Cage’s Concerto first movement intuitively and improvisationally composed, and
for Prepared Piano,” Perspectives of the orchestra. In contrast with the first movement’s piano part,
New Music, Vol. 26, No. 1, Winter 1988,
pp. 50–81; and James Pritchett, “The freely composed in the manner of Cage’s prepared piano works of
Development of Chance Techniques in the 1940s, the orchestra part derived from a fourteen-column by
the Music of John Cage, 1950–1956,”
New York University, Department of sixteen-row chart on which all sonorities were specifically notated.
Music, 1988. My thanks to Rebecca Kim Each of the sixteen rows was weighted toward a particular instru-
for the last two references.
ment: row 1, flute; row 2, oboe; row 3, clarinet, and so on, down
though the various types of percussion: metal, wood, friction, and
a miscellaneous section that Cage described as “characterized by
25. John Cage, Letter to Pierre Boulez, mechanical means, e.g., the radio.”25 The fourteen columns in each
May 22, 1951, in Nattiez, (ed.), p. 93.
row contained different sounds or sound aggregates, each weighted
according to the instrument dominating the row. Unlike Music
of Changes, each sound within the concerto, no matter how simple
or complex, was invariant and predefined. As Cage explained to
Boulez: “Each sound is minutely described in the chart: e.g. a
particular tone, sul pont on the 2nd string of the first vn. [violin]
26. Ibid. with a particular flute tone and, for example a wood block.”26
215
For the orchestral part of the first movement, Cage derived the
sequence in which the sounds would occur by making vertical and
horizontal moves on the chart: beginning with the sound represent-
ed in one of the cells, subsequent sounds were selected by follow-
ing a simple sequence such as moving down two cells and then
27. Cage wrote to Boulez, “I then made over three.27 In composing the concerto’s second movement, Cage
moves on this chart of a ‘thematic na-
ture’ but, as you may easily see, with an retained the chart for the orchestra and added a second chart of
‘athematic’ result. This entire first move- equally detailed sonorities for the prepared piano. In this case,
ment uses only 2 moves, e.g. down 2,
over 3, up 4, etc,” in ibid. According to
however, Cage determined the sequence of the sounds by a different,
Bernstein, most moves were two-part, although equally impersonal, method that involved tracing a series
one on the vertical axis and one on the
horizontal axis. Bernstein, p. 195.
of concentric circles and squares on graph paper. For the third and
final movement, Cage employed a single chart in which he com-
bined sounds to be made by the piano, sounds to be made by the
orchestra, and a number of new sound aggregates to be made by
both piano and orchestra together, thus representing their ultimate
28. As noted by Pritchett, however, unification within a single, impersonal compositional procedure.28
Cage subjectively modified such aspects
as phrasing and rhythm. Pritchett, p. 63.
As when composing the orchestra’s part of the first movement,
Cage selected the sounds by means of simple two-part vertical and
horizontal moves on the chart. It was here that Cage first employed
the I Ching. Although the chart of piano and orchestra sounds for
the third movement consisted of the same sixteen rows and four-
teen columns he had used earlier, Cage produced two additional
216
John Cage classes at the New School for Social Research, 1958
(left to right: John Cage, George Brecht, Al Kouzel, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage,
Al Hansen, center, and Allan Kaprow, back wall)
Since the charts Cage used in composing Concerto for Prepared Piano
and Chamber Orchestra included already complete and precisely
29. As Pritchett notes, “The sounds notated sound complexes, composition essentially consisted in
of the concerto are both independent using chance operations to determine the sequencing of the sounds.
(in the way they occur in time) and
simultaneous (in the way they exist in Thus, to a certain extent, the Concerto is a linear equivalent of the
the chart).” (Pritchett, p. 75). Important- charts that, at any given moment, represent the totality of available
ly, Cage introduced means of retiring
and replacing sounds within the chart sounds.29 In this respect, Cage’s procedure had not advanced all
technique of Concerto for Prepared Piano that far beyond Duchamp’s or Tzara’s random drawing of materials
and Chamber Orchestra. Nevertheless,
at any given moment, the charts were out of a hat or bag.30 In Music of Changes, by contrast, Cage’s separa-
static and complete. See Cage’s com- tion of the sound’s various components into multiple charts – one
ments to Boulez in Nattiez, (ed.), p. 94.
containing sonorities, one containing durations, and one containing
30. The Concerto profoundly altered dynamics – allowed him to surpass the limitations of compositional
Cage’s notion of musical continuity;
nonetheless, he employed several
preconception not merely in the sequencing of the sounds, but in
means by which to produce transposi- their very identity. More than simply arranged according to the laws
tions, symmetry, and other correspon-
dences. See Bernstein, pp. 195–96
of chance, each defining parameter of every acoustical event within
and 202–3. Music of Changes was determined by chance operations.
217
Such an apparently small shift from one to multiple charts intro-
duced two important changes in Cage’s aesthetic. The first concerns
the understanding of the pool of sounds from which his composi-
tion would draw. In place of a closed set of predetermined sounds,
Cage would conceive of sound as a limitless and differentiated
“sound-space” or “field.” The second change concerns the manner
in which sounds are understood to move from this sound-space
into the composition and, from there, into the areas of performance
and audition. Both transformations will ultimately prove impor-
tant for understanding the full implications of Cage’s engagement
with chance.
218
immediately notated dots on a sheet of paper by, for instance,
marking a number of imperfections found on the sheet within a
33. In Music for Carillon I, Cage used a given amount of time.33 These points could then be translated into
stencil made from crumpled paper
to determine the placement of the dots.
sounds by establishing different means of mapping by which their
In scores using transparencies, he frequency, amplitude, timbre, duration, and “morphology” (attack
used randomly arrayed dots printed and decay characteristics) could be determined independently
on paper or moveable transparencies.
of the composer’s preconceptions. No longer beginning in the mind
of the composer, the composition now drew its materials from the
entirety of an acoustical “field.” “The reason I am presently work-
ing with imperfections in paper is this,” Cage noted in 1954. “I am
thus able to designate certain aspects of sound as though they were
34. Cage, “45’ for a Speaker,” p. 157. in a field, which of course they are.”34
On the point-drawing technique,
see Pritchett, pp. 92ff.
Cage’s conception of sound as existing within a field was precipi-
tated by his interest in technology. In Cage’s estimation, the capa-
bilities of, for instance, magnetic tape allowed for the possibility
not only of reproducing any sound but, through various means of
manipulation, producing every possible sound. Sound thereby
became conceivable as a continuous expanse without gap, division,
or lacuna. As Cage explained in “Experimental Music”:
Musical habits include scales, modes, theories of counterpoint and harmo-
ny, and the study of the timbres, singly and in combination of a limited number of
sound-producing mechanisms. In mathematical terms these all concern discrete
steps. They resemble walking – in the case of pitches, on steppingstones twelve in
number. This cautious stepping is not characteristic of the possibilities of mag-
netic tape, which is revealing to us that musical action or existence can occur at any
point or along any line or curve or what have you in total sound-space; that we are,
in fact, technically equipped to transform our contemporary awareness of nature’s
35. John Cage, “Experimental Music” manner of operation into art.35
(1957), Silence, p. 9.
219
course, that what we’re doing is exploring a field,” Cage would
proclaim in 1961, “that the field is limitless and without qualitative
39. John Cage, “Where Are We Going? differentiation but with multiplicity of differences.”39
And What Are We Doing?” (1961),
Silence, pp. 204–5.
43. Cage, “45’ for a Speaker,” p. 191. Where Cage quoted Bergson most explicitly, however, was on the
notion of disorder. As he stated, for instance, in a lecture delivered
at Dartmouth College in 1955, “Magnetic tape reveals to ears… that
things are in this life in a state of togetherness that is a real cause
for joy, that their disorder, if so it appears to us, is simply (as Bergson
220
44. John Cage, [“Dartmouth Spring has said) an order we had not been looking for.”44 Bergson’s
’55“], folder 10, box 12, John Cage
Papers, Collection 1000-72, Special
critique of disorder was also found in Creative Evolution and
Collections and Archives, Olin Library, proceeded in the same manner as his critique of nonbeing. As
Wesleyan University, Middletown,
alluded to in Cage’s paraphrase, Bergson considered disorder to
Conn.; cited in Kim, p. 221. Kim
also mentions Earle Brown’s citation be a pseudo-idea that arose on account of the disappointment
of Bergson, p. 97. of an individual who, searching for one kind of order, finds
another. “When I enter a room and pronounce it to be ‘in disorder,’
what do I mean?” queried Bergson:
The position of each object is explained by the automatic movements of
the person who has slept in the room, or by the efficient causes, whatever they may
be, that have caused each article of furniture, clothing, etc., to be where it is: the
order, in the second sense of the word, is perfect. But it is order of the first kind
that I am expecting, the order that a methodical person consciously puts into his
life, the willed order and not the automatic: so I call the absence of this order
“disorder.” At bottom, all there is that is real, perceived and even conceived, in
this absence of one of the two kinds of order, is the presence of the other. But the
second is indifferent to me, I am interested only in the first, and I express the pres-
ence of the second as a function of the first, instead of expressing it, so to speak,
45. Bergson, pp. 232–33. as a function of itself, by saying it is disorder.45
221
and grasped by the human mind. Relationships were seen as
inherently limited, essentially dualistic, and therefore reductive in
comparison with the multiplicity Cage was attempting to access.
Drawing upon Suzuki, Cage explained:
From a non-dualistic point of view, each thing and each being is seen at the
center, and these centers are in a state of interpenetration and non-obstruction.
From a dualistic point of view, on the other hand, each thing and each being is not
seen: relationships are seen and interferences are seen. To avoid undesired inter-
ferences and to make one’s intentions clear, a dualistic point of view requires a
50. John Cage, “Composition as Process careful integration of the opposites.50
II: Indeterminacy” (1958), Silence, p. 38.
222
indicate a relationship between the composition’s sounds and the
material from which they were drawn that was not one of identity,
but one of difference.
223
elements available at any one given time that one element that is,
at a particular moment, to be realized.
224
of experimental actions. As Cage wrote about his score, Variations I
(1958), “In this situation, the universe within which the action is
to take place is not preconceived. Furthermore, as we know, sounds
are events in a field of possibilities, not only at the discrete points
58. John Cage, “Composition as Process conventions have favored.”58
I: Changes” (1958), Silence, p. 28.
225
I am talking & contemporary music is changing. Like life it changes. If it were
not changing it would be dead. That is why chance enters for me so largely into
my means which are skillful. It is at the point of potentiality… I am working now to
62. Ibid., p. 181. work without charts, without any support in total space.62
226
though only sounds, have come together to control a human being, the performer,
gives the work the alarming aspect of a Frankenstein monster. This situation is
of course characteristic of Western music, the masterpieces of which are its most
frightening examples, which when concerned with humane communication only
66. Cage, “Composition as Process II: move over from Frankenstein monster to Dictator.66
Indeterminacy,” p. 36.
For the audience, too, there was little difference between Music of
Changes and any intentionally composed work. Although Cage’s
compositional process eliminated any a priori message, it did not
interrupt the communicative process seen to operate between
composer or performer and audience. On account of the fixity of
its score, the Music of Changes could not escape a posteriori projec-
tions and analyses: it was just as open to the recovery or imputa-
67. See Adorno’s criticism that “Cage, tion of meanings as tarot cards or cups of tea leaves.67
and doubtless many of his disciples,
content themselves with abstract
negation in seances with overtones Although, in Music of Changes, Cage concentrated exclusively on
of [Rudolf] Steiner, eurythmics and
healthy-living sects.” (Adorno, “Vers
composition, he succeeded on that level in gaining insights that led
une musique informelle,” p. 315.) to the realization of his “failure” within the realms of performance
and audience reception. Seeking to move beyond the determinate
score of Music of Changes, Cage pursued indeterminacy, developing
the means by which a single point or note could be read in a variety
– eventually an unlimited variety – of ways. Hence, the majority of
Cage’s point-drawing scores (and, later, those using transparencies)
take the form of compositional puzzles for which the “answers”
– that is, the actual notes to be played – are variable or even unlim-
ited in scope and, at the outset, unknown to either composer or
performer. In this sense, the score comes into existence as a result
of the performer’s “actualization”; prior to that moment it exists
only in a state of virtuality. As Cage explained in the lecture,
“Experimental Music,” “The total field of possibilities [read ‘virtua-
lities’] may be roughly divided and the actual sounds within these
divisions may be indicated as to number but left to the performer
68. Cage, “Experimental Music,” p. 11. or to the splicer to choose.”68
227
and only if, it exists as a virtuality with relation to the stage of
performance that succeeds it. In this, the performer partially loses
his or her subservient position as the composer’s representative
to take on a greater share in the role of individual creator, and
the performance loses its role as a representation of the score to
69. For Cage, such a critique of repre- become a process of actualized differentiation.69
sentation was explicitly political and in
line with his developing anarchism. See,
for instance, Cage’s invocation of the The same is true of the relationship between performance and
police in “History of Experimental Music
in the United States” (1959), Silence,
audience reception. In the first place, performance becomes inde-
p. 72. terminate of audition on account of its potential unrepeatability.
The same piece at different times and performed by different
performers (each of whom has, presumably, actualized the score
for him or herself) gives rise quite literally to distinct acoustical
experiences, and this indeterminacy is augmented by Cage’s
explicitly allowing for the possibility of multiple compositions of
70. In order to make the variability his being performed simultaneously.70 In addition, the “transpar-
of indeterminate works clear, Cage
and David Tudor would often perform
ency” of Cage’s compositions, their openness to the inclusion of
multiple versions (actualizations) of ambient and unintended noises, further differentiates each perfor-
the same score within a single concert.
mance according to the acoustical circumstances encountered in
the particular time and place of presentation. (This, Brecht noted
quite specifically: “Ambient sound penetrates the intended, is
‘included’ in the music. It is relevant to the situation in which the
71. Dieter Daniels, (ed.), George Brecht, music arises/relevant to the music, which is ever situational.”)71
Notebook III (April 1959–August 1959),
Cologne: Walther König, 1991, p. 125.
Moreover, the music’s being free of any traditionally expressive or
communicative message, the audience’s act of interpretation
(as the hermeneutic uncovering of meaning) gives way to what Cage
72. Cage, “45’ for a Speaker,” p. 174;
called “sensitivic responsiveness” or “response ability”: a form
and “Experimental Music,” p. 10. of reception that arises from, but is not determined by, the perfor-
Brandon LaBelle has described the man-
mance, a reception that is as constitutively dependent on each
ner in which Cage’s music reconfigures
listening particularly nicely: “By seeking audience member as on the composer or performer.72
to strip away the representational
nature of sound… sound is potentially
dislodged to float along a chain of refer- For the audience of one of Cage’s pieces, the performance is a virtu-
ence, as a ‘signifying’ agent within a ality, it is a virtual multiplicity, and the same is true of the composi-
musical event, outside the narratives
of musical argument. This signifying of tion with relation to the performance and of sound or ontology with
sound over its signification (and ulti- relation to the composition. The passage or movement from one
mate decipherability) makes possible
a shift in listening by which individual activity to the other is one of actualization, a process of differentia-
imagination is mobilized, for listening tion from one layer to the next that is a process of individuation.
reaches not for correct meaning but for
its potential.” Brandon LaBelle, Back- Acoustical aggregates are actualized in the process of composing to
ground Noise: Perspectives on Sound form small, virtual systems by which the composition functions as
Art, New York: Continuum, 2006, p. 17.
a multiplicity.73 These, in turn, are actualized into specific acousti-
73. “Given a number of actually active cal events in performance, forming in their interaction with other
points, they are an aggregate, a constel-
lation, they can move about among
sounds (both performed and ambient) a multiplicity with relation
themselves and it becomes necessary to the audience. Finally, the audience – by means of the interaction
to classify the kinds of aggregates,
say constant and again intermittent.”
of sounds with the individual’s unique emotional and cognitive
Cage, “45’ for a Speaker,” p. 163. responses – actualizes an experience that is individual.
228
Cage advocated promoting such an individualized reception by
dispersing performers and/or loudspeakers around and about the
audience (an avenue first explored in Cage’s happening-like Theater
Event #1 [1952] at Black Mountain College). Such acoustical distri-
bution fragmented the performed sound, rendering what is heard
by each audience member different from the experience of others
located at different positions throughout the hall. In this way, the
unique proximity of each listener to the various points of sound
production physically renders performance indeterminate of any
one, unique, collective experience of hearing. Cage explained:
Rehearsals have shown that this new music, whether for tape or for instru-
ments, is more clearly heard when the several loud-speakers or performers
are separated in space rather than grouped closely together. For this music is not
concerned with harmoniousness as generally understood, where the quality of
harmony results from a blending of several elements. Here we are concerned with
the coexistence of dissimilars, and the central points where fusion occurs are
74. Cage, “Experimental Music,” p. 12. many: the ears of the listeners wherever they are.74
229
would call, following Suzuki, “unimpededness and interpenetra-
tion”) was seen by Bergson as essential. “The evolution of life
in the double direction of individuality and association has there-
fore nothing accidental about it,” he declared, “it is due to the
77. Ibid., p. 261. On “unimpededness very nature of life.”77
and interpenetration,” see, for instance,
Cage, “Composition as Process III: Com-
munication” (1958), Silence, pp. 46–47. We are now in a better position to understand what is meant by
Cage when he famously defined the purpose of writing music as
“an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos
nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of wak-
ing up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one
gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its
78. Cage, “Experimental Music,” p. 12. own accord.”78 The answer has nothing to do with the presentism
of which Cage has often been accused, the quietistic endorsement of
a purely mimetic relationship between the composition and the
actually existing state of society. Rather, the relationship of the work
of art to the ontological state of being – the relationship, in other
words, of art to life as put forward by Cage – is one of indeterminacy
in this sense: sounds (and, as we shall see shortly, other aspects of
existence as well) come into existence through a process of differen-
tiation as they pass from a state of virtuality to one of actualization.
230
all facets of existence. As Cage explained in “Experimental Music:
Doctrine” in 1955:
Urgent, unique, uninformed about history and theory, beyond the imagina-
tion, central to a sphere without surface, its [a sound’s] becoming is unimpeded,
energetically broadcast. There is no escape from its action. It does not exist as one
of a series of discrete steps, but as transmission in all directions from the field’s
center. It is inextricably synchronous with all other, sounds, non-sounds, which
80. Cage, “Experimental Music: latter, received by other sets than the ear, operate in the same manner.80
Doctrine,” p. 14.
One year earlier, in “45’ for a Speaker,” Cage had specifically invok-
ed the relation of sound and vision, writing:
Music is an oversimplification of the situation we actually are in. An ear alone
82. Cage, “45’ for a Speaker,” p. 149.
is not a being; music is one part of theater. “Focus” is what aspects one’s noticing.
83. Ibid., p. 189. Cage’s invocation of Theater is all the various things going on at the same time. I have noticed that music
“theater” was doubtlessly related to
is liveliest for me when listening for instance doesn’t distract me from seeing.82
his reception of Antonin Artaud, whose
work he studied in 1951–52. See Cage’s
comments in his letter to Boulez, May
22, 1951, in Nattiez, (ed.), p. 96.
Anticipating the partial conjunction of his own discipline with
that of most of his New School students, Cage noted further,
84. The Audio Visual Group is men-
“it is theater and music disappears entirely into the realm of art
tioned in Joseph Jacobs, “Crashing New
York à la John Cage,” in Joan Marter, where it knows it belongs.”83
(ed.), Off Limits: Rutgers University
and the Avant-Garde, 1957–1963, New
Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Although by no means deriving exclusively from Cage’s example,
Press, 1999, p. 73. On the notion the genres of happenings and Fluxus drew greatly upon Cage’s
of Cagean “theater,” see Branden W.
Joseph, “The Tower and the Line: extension of composition to include the visual as well as the au-
Toward a Genealogy of Minimalism,” dible, objects and environments as well as sounds. Kaprow’s first
Grey Room No. 27, spring 2007, pp.
58–81, and (a reworking of some of the happenings, Brecht’s early experiments with light, and Hansen,
same material) Beyond the Dream Higgins, and Larry Poons’s founding of the Audio Visual Group
Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts
after Cage, New York: Zone Books, can all be understood as developments of Cagean “theater.”84 In
2008, esp. pp. 81–84. 1960, even as Kaprow had become the happening’s official spokes-
85. Diane De Bonneval, “New
person, the genre was received as indelibly linked to Cage’s New
School’s ‘Happenings’ Proves to be School classroom and its practitioners identified as his students.85
‘Hellzapoppin’ – Beatnik Style,”
New York World-Telegram and Sun,
Even as late as 1961, a year after Cage had stopped teaching, Brecht
May 3, 1960, in Hermann Braun, could still be found working through Cage’s theatrical paradigm.
(ed.), George Brecht, Notebook V
(March 1960–November 1960),
In the draft of an article proposed for the nascent publication,
Cologne: Walther König, 1997, p. 89. Fluxus, Brecht wrote:
231
Composers, performers and auditors of music permit sound-experiences by
arranging situations having sound as an aspect. But there are other than sound-
situations. But the theater is well lit. Situations can be of interest in any dimension.
Now consider music admitting ambient sound, for example, that of John Cage,
Christian Wolff. Why shut my eyes? And if my eyes are open, why a “sound-situation?”
Why mention sound at all. There are things to see. I have to cough; the seat creaks;
and I can feel the vibration. Since there is no distraction, why choose sound as the
86. Hermann Braun, (ed.), George common aspect?86
Brecht, Notebook VII (June 1961–
September 1962), Cologne: Walther
König, 2005, p. 115. Much in this Working within the context of Cage’s class, Brecht engaged not
passage was struck through by Brecht. only with general ideas, but with specific compositional procedures.
Hence one finds Brecht, in what seems one of his first “homework”
assignments, proposing an extension of Cage’s point-drawing
scores:
(1) A piece of wood, about 1 foot square, is painted white, and while still wet
is placed outdoors (e.g. in the woods). After it is dry, each speck represents a sound.
(2) An “interpretive matrix” (ruled areas, lines, etc. on acetate, over a frame)
87. Daniels, (ed.), George Brecht, Note- is placed over this piece of wood, to allow transformation into sound.87
book I, p. 24. Cage’s Music for Carillon
No. 5 (1967) would later use the grain of
a piece of plywood to determine pitches. Here, Brecht can be seen extending Cage’s point-drawing tech-
My thanks to David Patterson for this
nique in a more painterly and object-oriented direction, while liter-
connection.
alizing Cage’s relationship to nature.
232
such situations” that Brecht will have recourse to the framework
of actualization:
If each micro-event (lighting of a light, sounding of a sound-source) is
capable of occurring in only one point of space (e.g. by the static placement of
a speaker, or light bulb), then this space “discreteness” is analogous to a time
discreteness, wherein micro-events would only be capable of occurring at certain
points in time. Of course, a “program” actually does constrain events to occur at
certain points in time.
We must, perhaps, differentiate “potentiality” and “actuality.” Universe
of possibilities. Embodiment. The above paragraph shows confusion of these two
90. Ibid., pp. 35–36 (dated October 26, [upward arrow] ideas.90
1958).
233
chance not as actualizing a virtuality, but as the realization of a
limited and predetermined set of possibilities (in the strict,
Bergsonian sense of the term). This, Brecht explained precisely:
It is sometimes possible to specify only the universe of possible character-
istics which a chance event may have. For example, a toss of a normal die will be
expected to give a number from one to six. Any particular face will be expected
to turn up in about one-sixth of a great many throws. But the outcome of any one
toss remains unknown until the throw has been made. It is often useful to keep
in mind this “universe of possible results,” even when that universe is hypotheti-
cal, for this clarifies for us the nature of our chance event as a selection from a
93. Brecht, p. 2. limited universe.93
236
or potential activity, in the sense that it could be activated or lit,
at any moment. Any particular light or speaker would be actually
active, however, could light or emit a sound, only upon receipt
of appropriate frequency stimuli. In other cases, energy would be
passing through (would be, from the perceiver’s point of view)
98. Brecht well understood the relation- virtually there, but would not be actually perceivable.98
ship of difference, or non-resemblance,
between score and performance that
occurred in a situation of actualization: The second important transformation to Brecht’s aesthetic out-
“…the score, or program, has no
look to take place after his exposure to Cagean aesthetics involves
necessary correspondence to the light-
sound event.” (Ibid. p. 24 [dated October the role of the individual subject – composer, performer, or
14, 1958]). listener (perceiver) – within the actualization process. Early on in
Cage’s class, Brecht noted the tripartite division between compos-
er, performer, and listener, importantly understanding that each
stage in the process of composition, performance, and perception
could be the locus of “sound-structuring,” as when, in the case
of listening, the spatialization of acoustical stimuli rendered the
individual the structuring center of the multiplicity of acoustical
99. Daniels, (ed.), George Brecht, events.99 Brecht would think though the various relations between
Notebook III, p. 115. Brecht notes the
tripartite situation of composer,
composer, performer, and listener in great detail, eventually ex-
performance, and perception in Daniels, tending his focus to five different tiers with the addition of “nota-
(ed.), George Brecht, Notebook II,
p. 23 (dated October 10, 1958).
tion” and “sound” and graphing the results in an elegant penta-
Brecht notes the “Implications of the grammic chart.100 Brecht’s considerations encompass all possible
spatial arrangement of sound-sources”
relations – from the most determined (“playing magnetic tape”) to
in Daniels, (ed.), George Brecht,
Notebook II , p. 9 (dated October 4, the most indeterminate. However, within his discussions of inde-
1958). terminate and/or environmental music, the process of actualiza-
100. Ibid., pp. 126–27. tion, as it operated from one stage to another, is evident. As Brecht
wrote, for example, in draft notes for yet another proposed article
(on “Situational Music”):
In performing this new music (with much compositional indeterminacy) the
performer confirms his own nature, in exactly the way the composer, in composi-
tion, confirmed his. The “virtu” of virtuosity must now mean behavior out of one[’]s
life-experience; it cannot be delimited toward physical skill. The listener respond-
ing to this sound out of his own experience, adds a new element to the system:
composer/notation/performer/sound/listener, and, for himself, defines the sound
101. Ibid., p. 123. as music. For the virtuoso listener all sound may be music.101
237
and example for years). In addition to his prior interest in
Dada and the work of Jackson Pollock, he had encountered the
work of the British experimental composer Cornelius Cardew,
which pushed him to understand perception as constituted by
the individual’s internal, visceral “environment” as much as
by their physical surrounds (“…is the food in our stomachs
102. Ibid., p. 128. It is my speculation a part of the ‘ambient situation?’”).102 And, as Julia Robinson has
that Brecht moves toward this observa-
tion under the influence of Cardew.
demonstrated elsewhere in detail, Brecht’s thinking had been
Brecht references Cornelius Cardew’s profoundly transformed by exposure, in another New School
essay “re-pulling listener’s teeth” in
Daniels, (ed.), George Brecht, Notebook
course, to German philosopher, Ernst Cassirer’s ideas about
III, p. 114. Cardew’s article, as made symbolic form.103 With works such as Time Table Music (1959)
clear by Brecht’s reference on p. 117, is
– which entailed no composition, as such, but considered all
Cornelius Cardew, “The Unity of Musical
Space,” New Departures No. 1, sum- occurrences within a given time period (chosen at random from
mer 1959, pp. 53–56. Some years later, a commuter schedule) as part of the event – Brecht situated
Brecht would participate with Cardew
in events around the Scratch Orchestra himself closer, perhaps, to the position of the virtuoso listener
in London. than to that of the multiplicitous composer that Cage largely
103. Julia E. Robinson, From Abstrac- still occupied (4’33” notwithstanding). Yet, it is not enough to
tion to Model: In the Event of George contend that Brecht simply went his own way, or merely derived
Brecht and the Conceptual Turn in Art of
the 1960s, PhD dissertation, Princeton inspiration or encouragement from Cage. Rather (like his West
University, Department of Art History Coast counterpart, La Monte Young), Brecht only came into
and Archaeology, 2008.
his own by working through the implications of Cage’s aesthetic
in its most advanced form. Only then was Brecht prepared
to transform his artistic focus from the “structure of nature”
– which, in part by following Cage, Brecht had come to see as
infinitely changing and, hence,properly unknowable – to the
104. Daniels, (ed.), George Brecht,
Notebook II , p. 107 (dated January 21,
individual’s “structure of experience,” the point at which
1958). the totality of events would be actualized.104
238